LEPRECAT 1, page two

Leprecat One, page two. (plus)

A bunch of Strange Critters indeed.

We have a variety of heights here from near-human to a mere six inches tall. Lots of apparently classic gnomes in the country, plus a small number of what seem to be apparitions rather than The Little People we are chasing. I have 16 of these (and other incidents of 19th century date) that are crudely illustrated via cartoons, so let's look at those. Among them (later) are two cases eerily similar which create a mystery for me. Let's just plow in. 

 Ah,  two not-so-friendly characters and a neutral. 

1. Lochan-nan-Deaan, Scotland.  The Story: The lake had an old tradition going back centuries. It was said to be the abode of a blood-thirsty "water spirit" which in olden times had demanded sacrifices. Such practices being, if ever, well into the past, the local men did not fear any of that. The lake was also said to be bottomless, but few believed it. Curiosity being what it is, many of the men of two nearby villages decided to drain the loch to discover if the remains of skeletons would be uncovered there. Arriving there with spades and mattocks to carve a way for the loch's waters to flow away, they had no sooner begun when their labors were interrupted by a loud screaming. 

This had erupted from a little "man" of gnomish dimensions who had burst up through the loch's surface.  The violence of his appearance and yelling scared everyone so that they dropped shovels and picks and began to run. The gnome exited the water, seized upon the implements, and threw them into the loch. He then almost burst the air with a thunderous roar as he plunged back into his loch, while the waters roiled in a blood-red swirl as he disappeared beneath them. Well .... that loch wasn't drained that day. 

I don't have the primary reference on this incident but the book pictured was nearly time twinned to it and has an apparently good telling.

Mackinlay's Folklore of Scottish Lochs and Springs is a superb source by the way. But if you go to it looking for Nessie, you won't find her there --- plenty of incidents of Waterhorses and Kelpies though.


The Primary source for the Lochan-nan Deaan incident comes from a well-known Scottish folklorist at the time, the Reverend Walter Gregor. Gregor was going throughout (mainly) NE Scotland interviewing and saving Scottish heritage for a series of studies printed in early numbers of the Folk-Lore Society. This one comes from The Folk-Lore Journal of March 1892, which I sadly do not own. One of you might go there and see if Gregor's writing sounds as if he interviewed anyone closer to the encounter himself, or if this was just local common knowledge. 

========================================================================

Truro, Cornwall. 1810.  The story: This is a single witness claim. The reporter was a tailor of good repute and a well-known man. He was a friend of the writer-of-the-case's grandfather. He left the grandfather's home at around dusk to begin his walk home. He had to walk past the local graveyard and then the old church. As he came to the stile in the church fence, suddenly a troop of Piskies (pixies to us moderns) appeared. Startled he froze for the moment. The piskies were about a foot-and-a-half high, and composed a whole line of trooping fairies (as the Irish would say.) 


They were dressed alike with red cloaks and tall lumped-over sugarloaf hats. (black.) They moved in single file on the run. Descended a bank, ran up a hedge, and disappeared into the churchyard and the gloaming. Regaining his nerve, he climbed the fence and hurried after ... but no further sign of the troop was to be seen anywhere. Later he told everyone that he saw of the experience, and repeated this as true for many years. 

I don't have the original source but it is available online as the rather obscure journal, Devon and Cornwall Notes and Records. A researcher well-known to that society, one H. Michell Whiteley, was the "modern" reporter. 


I don't know about you folks, but this one seems pretty good to me.  
========================================================================

Lostwithiel, Cornwall,  1816.  The story: this is a single witness claim. A well-known farmer in Lostwithiel had a pony which he liked a great deal and so would allow it to roam free outside the barn during good weather. During one stretch he began to notice that the pony seemed to have taken ill. At morning, the animal would look utterly exhausted but seemed to get better as the day went on. The next day: the same thing ... and on. Consulting with neighbors, the opinion was that the animal was being afflicted somehow by piskies.

The farmer decided to stay out of sight that next evening and keep watch. That evening the pony was assaulted by five little beings no more than a half foot high. These creatures were what I would call boggarts rather than proper members of the Faery folk, resembling small hairy dark ape-men, rather than a "self-respecting" well-clothed Coballos or gnome. The things were naked and wild. When on their feet in the field, they merrily attacked one another in wrestling modes, trying to toss each other on their backs. The winner of this free-for-all got the privilege of jumping on the pony, dancing on it and harassing it and "singing very obscene songs" while its defeated comrades howled obscenities back, terrifying the pony further ... until it galloped crazily around the field finally collapsing to the ground. 

The farmer and his local farrier decided that it was not wise anymore to allow the pony outside at night, and left it behind closed barn doors "protected" from piskie intrusions by placing pieces of the elder tree over those doors. 

Well, that was fun. I have no idea what to make of it. The story type is not unusual for the old people to tell, except that the piskies here are much cruder and smaller than "normal." The big problem is the source. The incident, quoted by AK Hamilton Jenkin in his Cornwall and the Cornish, comes originally from a Cornish newspaper which is WAY beyond my scope to obtain and read. Why bother? Because it is only by reading a bunch of this publication that I could even guess as to its level or seriousness. Did they print just anything? Could random folks just write a letter? I have no idea, therefore I have no idea of the credibility. 

But it was (despite the crudity) a great deal of fun, and I'd kind of like it to be true ... but ... deep Gray Basket. 


Lets call it a day. Tomorrow or the next I'll try at least three more encounters of the 19th century ... and maybe a little more light might dawn. 

Peace and Health.

Leprecat 1a

Leprecat: a "Missing" page 1A.
After the work with some of the usual older cases, a few sources (some common, some rare) passed across my research eye and seemed to demand their place in all this. So, here is some of that.

 
 Many of us have spent minutes of great fun staring at Olaus Magnus' 16th century map of the northern seas and lands. The adventuring Reverend was a type of latter day Pliny the Elder for his area of the world. Just as Pliny can be called the world's first broad-studying Fortean, Olaus can be credited as being similarly cut from that Fortean cloth. His map excites, while his accompanying book is an attempt at comprehensive description of what were at the time fairly unknown lands. In both we find the Little People.

Far to the north in Magnus' Greenland, we find the ancient echoes of modern day Iceland's insistence that their Trolls, their Little People, are real, and not terribly happy with us humans. 

Magnus inserts a confrontation between an armed troll and a similarly armed human, facing off over who is to occupy the land. This little drawing perhaps says much about the creatures that we are chasing in this blog today. The trolls are resident. We humans come and threaten to push them away. They aren't happy about it, and sort of oppose. In the end, the Human March keeps spreading out, driving the trolls away. 

Hidden in the story is why we succeed. It's not obvious. But something about us, or them, or both, allows the humans to inexorably "win" the land. We aren't there yet on this blog, but as cases go on, it seems as though the "other people" are limited with what they can do. ... at least in this physical world. We might be limited as to what we can do in interactions with them, but we can destroy anything in this physical world. Ultimately, in some sad sense, we "win" the world of physical nature. All of that is run-on philosophy and worth little scholarship-wise, but it remains a growing intuition. 

Elsewhere on Magnus' map is the other main form of human/troll interaction: the House Troll, or, as the Scotch/British would say: The Brounies. 

Magnus believed that everything that he placed on his map, and wrote in his book, was either obviously true, or at least credibly attested to by people that he knew or written by writers that he read and respected.  He wasn't just writing an entertaining Book of Wonders (though in many places it is surely that), he wanted to save all the character and detail of Northern Culture while educating other cultures to the south. He gave real numbers for the lengths of his prominent Sea Serpent and his River Orm, for instance.  Did he think that trolls still entered the household economies of persons that they chose to serve? Absolutely. And they did these services just as the Brownies in the British Isles were said to do. 

Magnus, I notice, maintains the concept of the Little Race of peoples of perhaps three-to-four feet in height. His map "brownie" has a dark red complexion, and is drawn as somewhat ugly, bordering on boggart ugliness. Like some traditions of British house-elves, his house troll seems to have no clothes --- remember the idea that a bound house elf can be liberated or, if they don't want to leave, can be forced to go, by giving them a piece of clothing --- thus JK Rowling's inclusion of this in the Harry Potter books. 

Although no descriptive words exist on the colorful map, brief descriptions of many things, often accompanied by engravings, appear in the book. Above, while magicians fly in the air, three vignettes of commonly experienced trolls appear. Note our boggart-looking house troll in the center,  while another controls the Winds at the right, and another mines ore in a cave to the left. These latter are the "knockers" of the mines. 

One other engraving, I believe, has some merit here. This one shows a Circling Dance of trolls. Some of these trolls have decidedly Faun-like appearances. (In this picture, one may say most do.) It reminds me greatly of a revel ruled by Pan. 

These tales/ reports/ beliefs are so commonly found in the British countryside (see Arthur Rackham's house brownie to the left) that they surely point to one of these things:

This is all one culture at its base. The common people all believe in the same constellation of beings and relationships growing from some ancient now-cloudy set of powerful ideas which made some important things in the world make sense.

OR ...

All of these geographically-close cultures were experiencing some profoundly TRUE set of real entities who behaved as one "culture" of related entities should do.

OR ... 

Both. 

Let's, as did the Curate in the John Aubrey case, try to stagger "forward" a bit, despite all that heady strangeness we just read/wrote above.

PANDEMONIUM: 1684 publication by Richard Bovet. (pretty much an idiot, but with a few surprising things included.) 

                                 Bovet's frontispiece with my arrows and circles drawn in.

We can see here at the beginning that Bovet believes in the reality of several anomalous things:
Witches, magicians, devils, "imps", flying dragon-like demons, forbidding locations, and fairies. With all of that, he is, strangely to us, relatively "normal" for his times. 

But he is still an idiot. 

Bovet was a violent anti-Catholic and a  fiery hater of atheists at the same time. Even as a good Catholic boy, I have to admit that neither of those assures candidacy for idiocy, though both are pretty unhelpful character traits in a truth-seeker (as are all biases.) Bovet is an idiot because he doesn't understand important basic things about his peasant countryfolk, despite moving among them and wanting to utilize some of those basic things in his book. 

Bovet is a witch-hunter born about a century late. He thinks that witchcraft, magic, spirits, and the Little People are all part of one demonic presence that opposes "true religion" and proper living. Well, whatever the definition of true religion and proper living may be, the common people didn't consider ANY of the four categories of things cited as even being related to any of the others. ALL FOUR were separate aspects of Creation. For sure the common people did not think that The Little People were "satanic." If devilry was involved, you MIGHT find it meddling in witchcraft, but in none of the other three. Even in witchcraft, some individuals seemed to "get their powers" through rituals containing Christian concepts and imagery. So, whatever else we might take from Bovet, his "philosophical beliefs" are way off.

But there turn out to be several things that we CAN take from him.

After his diatribes, suddenly this fierce dogma-infested person turns into a Fortean. Weird. Completely took me by surprise. Bovet wanted to find true reports from people which he hoped would buttress his book's attack on atheism. He was looking for things that in his mind would prove the existence of the world of the spiritual. That's kind of expected, but what wasn't was his apparent attitude during this search. He seems, very much so, like a wide-eyed explorer as he walks the paths of the Mysteries. I'd almost not mind being around him in this mode.

He finds several reports that he includes in his appendices. Some are fascinating. I'd like to note three that might be germane for our own adventuring. 

1. South Petherton, Somerset county. c. 1620AD. Bovet talked with relatives and friends of a former shopkeeper of this village, who had passed away somewhat recently. Many people repeated this tale as heard directly by them. 

The gentleman was selling goods at a local country fair. Home was still somewhat distanced, but "he had a good horse" and felt that he could make it before nightfall. He misjudged, and rode along in the dark. At a place alongside a high hedge, his horse suddenly started as if afraid and basically forced him up against the hedge. The horse was trembling violently. Ahead, making noises as if cracking the hedge came a strange thing. It was a ball or ring of light, light the dim color of dusk. It was the size of a wagonwheel in diameter. Inside the wheel or ball was the dark image of something like a bear. The creature was huge {if so, the shopkeeper must have felt that he was looking inside the wheel like an opening to another reality.} He described the thing as of the "proportion of a bear", but with fiery eyes. The exact description of what he saw we cannot know, but it was uncanny.

Report 2. Blackdown Hill, Tanton 1630. 

The bona fides of this report are almost exactly like the previous one: a respected fellow and merchant who had recently passed but who had told many persons of this experience. The added credibility here comes from the fact that many persons still alive told Bovet that they too had seen the Fairy Fair on the same hillside that the prime reporter had ridden right through. 

full disclosure: I REALLY like this one.

The witness was taking a trip across the local fields and up the hillside through a pass to other villages to sell his wares. As he rode towards the hillside, he saw there what appeared to be a country fair beside the road. This didn't make sense, as it was a wrong season for an open fair there. But what else could it be? He rode closer.

The fair was colorful, filled with booths selling all manner of things, colored flags and tents, and people in bright clothes of reds, greens, and blues, and frolicking in tall hats. Music and dancing filled the air. As the merchant grew close, he realized that the people were somewhat smaller than normal folks. They must have been the Little People. 

He didn't feel particularly threatened and he DID need to get over that hill, so he pushed on directly into the Fair. Then, just as he entered the space of the Fair, everything visually disappeared. Nothing to be seen except a dull atmosphere. But he FELT them. It was as if everyone and thing was still there, but unseen. He felt pressed or crowded upon. Then, as he got past the Fair's place, all returned to sight, and stunned, he went on his way. 

This encounter has a LOT in it. Many supportive witnesses who said that they had seen at different times the very same things but further away. The account is full of "normal" folk entity behavior, with a large dollop of very high strangeness. 

Report 3. Leith, Scotland. 1650. The "FAIRY BOY." 

This is another secondhand case, but one with many second hand supporters.  Whereas I greatly like Report 2, and genuinely like Report 1, this one is of such high strangeness claims that I'm nervous. Still, if it has any chance of reality, it's another world-breaker. 

This story claims that in the village of Leith there existed (not long before the "investigation") a peculiar young boy. This boy reminded me a bit of the character in Frank Sinatra's Nature Boy song --- a young child who seemed to know almost everything far beyond his years. 

He often astounded the persons who got to converse with him and could provide esoteric knowledge of things despite appearing no more than 10-11 years. He also said that he was a drummer and did indeed possess talent. He claimed that he became so good by drumming with the Fairies. He spoke of a people who lived beneath a local hill, into which he entered every Thursday night, to play his drums with their musicians. 

He then claimed to play at all their feasts, and sometimes they were all whisked away to other countries. He claimed to be able to see the future, and predict things. (The Second Sight.) During one meeting, when one of the witnesses decided to stay close to him so as to discover the means to enter the Fairy Hill, the Fairy Boy just disappeared, not to be seen again by him. 

(["There was a boy; a very strange enchanted boy. He said he came from very far, over land and sea. A little child, and sad of eye, but very wise was he. Then came that day, that magic day he passed my way. We sat and talked of many things, fools and kings. Then I heard him say:  
The Greatest Thing you'll ever learn, is just to Love, and be loved in return."])

Well, that case's tough to buy (though Frank Sinatra's lyrics are not), despite the witness earnest-ness. The other two: easier for me. You might feel differently. 

I'm going to stop here, and go on in a few days with more very early claims. I'm finding that trying to put out two postings in a week is a lot more work than I remember --- getting old. 
The business of putting in the extra mile to stir just a bit more fact, reference, and hypothesis into these stews takes it out of these old neurons. 

Back in a few (couple?) of days. Stay healthy folks.

leprecat page one

                                   

                                   LEPRECAT Page ONE

Well, let's start this thing. 

Leprecat is a crude compilation of cases that I've come across rather randomly. Some of these have been courtesy of a wonderful collection by Janet Bord, some from smaller collections by people like Diarmuid MacManus, some from Simon Young's Fairy Census. These things were and are high grade ore --- I resoundingly recommend them. Other sources have come almost one case at a time. Old folklore books. Old stories skewered away in lost literature; and new claims scattered throughout the Internet. My point is that I don't take these as some sort of professional scholarly creation and neither should you. It was done for adventure and fun, and I'm happy to share it with you. ... Maybe we'll even learn something as we go. 

The first page (above) has the very old cases in the catalog. I've bumped into others since making that page. Let's describe some of what's on that page, and then include some of the other stuff. Let's do it like eating popcorn. You can't go wrong with that.

 Chippenham England 1633. This is a story attributed to John Aubrey, a very famous intellectual and well-connected person in the 17th century. Aubrey was disturbed by the growing arrogance of the intelligentsia of his age towards the ideas of the peasantry and the simpler people, and what we today might call "anomalous happenings." 

Although this exact case doesn't appear in any of his formal writings (many other similar things do), it IS included in a later biography as a story told by him and passed down orally by him and then others who knew him best. It could even have been that this tale was discovered in some scribbles in his many unpublished notes. 

The incident: When Aubrey was an older schoolboy, the Curate of his school told him of the following  encounter with the fairies: It was near dawn, and the curate was walking over the downs alone when ahead he came suddenly upon a fairy dance. The fairies were numerous and dancing vigorously in a circle, making music and odd loud reveling noise. 

This revel left him immediately stunned. He thought afterwards that he might have been "enchanted" and unable to run. He did not describe their clothing but said that their stature was that of "pygmies" or small people. Let's say that about 3-to-4 feet would be a reasonable guess. The Little People were not exactly happy about being disturbed or intruded upon. They rushed around him, making odd buzzing type hummings, and he dizzily fell down. They continued to harass him until the Sun rose, and repeatedly pinched him as he lay. With the Sun, he found himself suddenly alone. All about him was the trampled down grass of a fairy revel. 

The case has some obvious interest. If it was told to John Aubrey by his Curate, then it has some substantial credibility. It is not unlike the picture of a fairy revel (circle dancing) that was commonly expressed by the rural people of that and later times. It interests me as well due to the claim that these creatures were not extremely small --- the three to four foot tall "fairyfolk" seems to me at this early stage to be "right" for these sorts of entities. 

But we're only one case in. Let's go on. 

=======================================================================

 Ragunda, Sweden. 1660. This case is usually read about in Thomas Keightly (The Fairy Mythology, 1878.) Forgive my failing memory, but I believe that the story first entered the UK when it was sent to the famous writer and enthusiast for the anomalous, Jacob Grimm, who occasionally, I believe, visited Edinburgh. 

This incident had two witnesses, a clergyman and his wife. They were alone in their home when they encountered an entity, like a "small man" at their door. They labeled the small man with the Scandinavian term for most Little People, "Troll." The Troll had a dark complexion and rough old gray clothes. 

He pleaded with the two humans to aid him and his wife, who was very pregnant, and about to deliver her baby without help. The wife and the minister were deeply moved by the story, and she agreed to go to serve as midwife for the Little People. 

The trip was remarkable as, once outside, she and the troll were "carried by the wind" to the troll house. The wife did her good service overnight, and the baby was delivered. The trolls were truly grateful for the selfless service, and upon returning her home, the minister and his wife found a quantity of silver left, apparently in appreciation for the charity. 

Keightly seemed to think that this was too good to be true, and dismissed the story as some form of lie. This is almost angering to see, as one would have wished better from Keightly. The reason that I type this, is that Jacob Grimm had the actual affidavit of the minister and his wife swearing that their report was true. Keightly ignored this, or didn't see it. 

The affidavit to Jacob Grimm raises this report to at least some reasonable trust. The "trouble" is, of course, for both Keightly and ourselves, that the intensity of the interaction described is just too much for "moderns" to accept. Even in this short story, if these details really happened, our whole view of (limited) material reality would have to expand radically or explode. 

=======================================================================

The third case on the paper above ... I have no cartoon. But that gives me the opportunity to say this about the illustrations: I'm just doing the best that I can with these things. Almost NO reports have REALLY good descriptions of the beings. Why is this ? I have no real idea. I believe however that the Old People just knew what these creatures looked like and there was no need for a lot of describing. As later cases come in, we get an age of VERY poor interviewers, almost hit-and-run story-grabbers. And in recent times no one cares to take the time. This, by the way, drives this old UFO researcher crazy.  But onwards .... 

Isle of Man, c. 1720-1730. The case comes from Janet Bord, quoting British government agent, George Waldron.  I had not run across the original source yet, but I trusted Janet Bord completely on this, and I assumed that a professional British administrator is a trustworthy source. Then with some digging I found it: AW Moore,  FOLKLORE of the ISLE of MAN, 1891. This (irrationally) always makes me feel better. 

The witness was the neighbor of Waldron. He had been a dismissive skeptic until he saw the fairies himself. Walking in a field, the neighbor saw a number of "schoolboys" playing in a field. As this was a school day, he walked towards them to reprimand them on their playing hooky. He was riveted upon his  targets when, at twenty paces away, they simply disappeared before him. There was nowhere in this field to hide. ... it must have been the Little People.

=======================================================================

 Cae Caled, Wales 1757. 

OK. Full disclosure. This is the sort of case that I really like. 

This report comes from several sources and the oldest seems to be Elias Owen's Welsh Folklore (1884.) Owen's book is a treasure house of fairy lore. One wonders why it isn't better known. Many of the materials in it seem more "fairy tale" like, but reports of encounter cases also sprinkle all about. In this case, Owen informs us that he has received not only the autobiography of the witness involved, but is reading the witness' hand-written notes describing the incident, lying there just on his desk. 

Owen labels the case: The Elf Dancers of Cae Caled. 

The Reverend Edward Williams, then just a child, was playing in a field with three other children, one being his older sister. After a time of normalcy, the four saw not far away a frenzy of dancing small persons. These people were all dressed in red uniforms, with red cloths or scarves for hats. They were smaller than adults, and about the children's size or slightly smaller. "Dwarfs" or "Grim Elves", but surely the Little People.  "Dancing with Great Briskness", the elves or gnomes moved so quickly that it was hard to see small details clearly. There were seven or eight couples in their dance. These being no group of local dancers (such as visiting May or Morris Dancers), the children became very alarmed and rose to flee. One "grim elf" (Williams' words) spotted them, and with angry face began to run after them. 

The children barely made it to the fence and got through the stile. Williams was the smallest and the last, just eluding the grasp of the Grim Elf. (I categorize these beings as "gnomes" as Williams says that the closest one had an "ancient, swarthy, and grim complexion." The gnome stopped on its side of the fence, and the children ran home and told their story. The adults believed them enough to go together to the field to investigate --- of course finding nothing.

For me, a rocking good report: good witness, good detail, multiple witnesses, good context, no elaboration nor braggadocio. If I could myself read the actual handnotes for this case, I'd be largely sold. 

=======================================================================

I've run out of steam for this entry. In a day or two, I'll try again.
Peace --- and may The Elfin Road Rise Up To Meet You on this St Paddy's Day. 

Maybe a Return in a Small Way

Maybe a Return in a Small Way..... 
 Hello to all who once read this blog, and all who might find it. I told everyone that I was ceasing to write this thing, even though it had been a great joy to me. Some others seemed to like it too. That sad promise has been kept for several years now. Life has recently changed for me. My best buddy and housemate recently died, I turned into my 80th year, and I decided to give up the house and move into a retirement community. The transition is generally good, but the one thing that I can't lick is getting back on the horse and doing anomalies research. There just isn't enough of the natural energy in my life here to easily motivate. 

I love the exploration too much to lull my last years away, so I'm going to post things here as a desperation move to pressure me back into activity.  What I post might be very boring folks, so I apologize beforehand. It also (at least at the beginning and maybe totally) will be about exploring the existence or not of the Faery Kingdom, which is the relatively new area for me, and I'd like to walk those old "new" paths and see what I can see. 

What I'm going to do is this, so you might decide whether it will be worth reading from your interests: 

 Some of you who have read the old blog, know that at the end I was exploring the claims of folkloric entities being real beings rather than just made up figures for story telling wisdom reasons. To attempt that, I was (as usual) going back to the original sources when I could, and making a catalog of cases (a la what a UFO researcher should do.) I nicknamed that catalog "LEPRECAT" for fun, and there are now 8 notebooks of such cases and a few hundred somewhat culled-for-quality individual experiences/reports. Some of these things I may have mentioned before, but most of what I'll begin to post here will be at least somewhat, if not entirely, new to the blog. 

 As some will remember seeing, the individual cases are logged as pages in the LEPRECAT notebooks, often as scans directly out of original sources. It's just one way of grouping these things that I like. The details of the claims are so varied, that simple categories of cases are not too easy to pile up --- at least at my current level of understanding. But the tales are certainly intriguing to me, so on I will go. 

 Once I get some real numbers of things (as I have), I make up types of logs as old readers know. The above is a "first page" of cases from LEPRECAT Volume One, wherein I've picked out several entries that included either credible witnesses, interesting details, or both. This is how I'd like to proceed --- pick a page of cases, and just talk about them, mainly individually. I'm not smart enough to conclude upon the nature of the claimed entities, only walk the paths and talk the facts and the possibilities.

Maybe we might get a small hint of the answer to the questions in the following illustration. 

I'm going to shoot for tomorrow or the next day to begin this in earnest. I'll begin with that first LEPRECAT page, and then we shall slowly crawl through the years and see what we can see.